To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII

Product Information

The most forgotten aspect of 1811 was the brief re-emergence of parlementaire Gallicanism. The council of state appointed a special commission of experts to explore legal remedies and apply pressure on the episcopate to solve the investiture crisis. It was presided over by Régnier, as minister of justice, and included some of the most famous jurists of the empire: Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, Bigot, Michel Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély and Achille Libéral Treilhard. Footnote 87 Many of these men had been close to the Jansenist avocats of the parlement of Paris who had resisted the papal bull Unigenitus with great vigour throughout the eighteenth century. Footnote 88 From this older generation of lawyers they had inherited a disdain for any intrusion by Rome into French affairs. They were eager to protect Gallicanism from papal interference. In this goal they had a keen ally in the Voltairian, and anti-clerical minister of police, Anne Jean Savary duc de Rovigo. Footnote 89 He had been a key figure in the repression of secret networks of Ultramontane clergy, and had overseen the interrogation and arrests of the three bishops who had challenged the emperor's intentions during the concile. In many ways these men were the ideologues of Napoleon's ‘War against God’.

Resilience and Recovery at Royal Courts, 1200–1840

The imperial government had expected that the threat of a concile national meeting in Paris would induce the pope to make concessions. In April 1811 all the bishops of the French empire, of the kingdom of Italy and Karl Theodor von Dalberg, prince-primate of Regensburg, were summoned to Paris. Footnote 56 The intention was that an assembly of the bishops of the imperial Church could circumvent papal authority and sanction canonical investiture by metropolitan archbishops (or in their absence the senior bishop of the province). Although superficially simple, this plan rapidly ran into difficulties. The three deputy bishops returned from Savona with a note, dated 19 May, which they claimed had the pope's sanction. Footnote 57 It comprised four articles which accepted the metropolitans’ right to invest new bishops within six months of nomination. Within forty-eight hours, the pope's conscience caused him to disavow the note and retracted the last two articles. From a legal standpoint, the note was unsigned and thus valueless.A scholarly monograph that reads like a thriller; and is a work of narrative history which ably threads ideas into the heart of its presentation.”—Alexander Faludy, Church Times My greatest complaint with the book is honestly that it isn't long enough! As the first major English work on this subject, I can tell it was incredibly we'll-researched, but the gripping drama between these two titans had me finishing the book in a matter of days.

Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII. By Ambrogio A. Caiani To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII. By Ambrogio A. Caiani

Above all, Napoleon believed that the church should be subordinate to the state. Thus, we should not be surprised that following the rapprochement, he declared that St. Neopolus — an obscure (and, Caiani suggests, possibly fictitious) early Christian martyr — would be celebrated each Aug. 15. For most Catholics, this was the date of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and also, by coincidence, Napoleon’s birthday. Indeed, the episode sketched in the book is important for any interested in understanding the roots of church-state conflict in Europe and elsewhere around the globe. Caiani relates this dramatic story in telling detail but never loses sight of the broader picture, and uses his archival discoveries to excellent effect. The result is both an exciting narrative and a fine work of scholarship, shedding new light on Napoleonic history and that of the modern Catholic Church.”—Munro Price, Literary Review Continuing with a series of ecclesiastical biographies (and my obsession with Napoleon), 'To Kidnap a Pope' is the story of Pius VII, the Pope who stood up to Napoleon, and suffered greatly for it. A stark contrast to my previous book on the relatively ineffectual and silent Pius XII, Pius VII feels more like a 19th-century martyr given his (almost) unbroken resolve.Munro Priceis Professor of Modern European History at the University of Bradford, UK, and specializes in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century French political and diplomatic history. Among his books are Louis XVI and the Comte de Vergennes: Correspondence, 1774-1787 (with John Hardman; Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1998), The Fall of the French Monarchy: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Baron de Breteuil (London, Macmillan, 2002) and Napoleon: The End of Glory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014 Caiani skillfully switches between a more academic tone and a journalistic one. This serious work of scholarship, which is the result of hours spent in archives, can occasionally read like a thriller — especially when telling how the pope nearly died during his relocation from Italy to the outskirts of Paris.

Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII | napoleonicwars To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII | napoleonicwars

Ambrogio is also very interested in how the Ancien Régime was invented and conceptualised during the 19th century. With Professor Michael Broers of the University of Oxford he organised an international conference in August 2016 entitled: ‘The Price of Peace, Modernising the Ancien Régime? 1815-1848’. This encouraged scholars to engage and share new comparative perspectives on the political history of the European Restorations and Vormärz periods. A two-volume edited collection based on the conference proceedings was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. On 25 July Bigot tallied votes for and against. To his satisfaction eighty-five bishops were favourable, while thirteen still opposed the decree. Footnote 99 Ten days later, the concile was reconvened for a pre-orchestrated final general congregation in which nothing was left to chance. Footnote 100 During the closing session, Bigot and Bovara steered the bishops successfully towards a formal ratification of the decree. The imperial government had achieved its objective, yet it could not hide the fact that the concile’s favourable verdict was the outcome of physical coercion and psychological intimidation. The enlarged deputation mandated by the decrees comprised the usual storm-troopers of Gallicanism and was expanded to include Cardinals Aurelio Roverella, Fabrizio Ruffo, Alphonse de Bayanne and Antonio Dugnani who headed for Savona. Footnote 101 They would negotiate with the pope from September until January 1812. Footnote 102The pen proving mightier than the sword is the theme of the book. However, the same could be said for Napoleon’s most controversial religious view — that of religious equality. Napoleon’s argument for religious freedom would outlast his empire and become a norm across Europe.